This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by TJtheTJ: 27.11.2012 16:10.

The problem with AT is that you will often find yourself losing a lot of money with a dominated hand. It will just happen very often that you have top pair, when your opponent will have a better kicker to go along with it. It's going to be very difficult to get away from this.

89s plays a lot better. It can hit decent enough draws, or well disguised two pair type hands. You'll often know where you're at in the hand immediately, whereas this is a lot more difficult with AT.

They call this reverse implied odds. Hands like AT and QT and KJ seem pretty decent at first, but you'll often find yourself losing money to hands that dominate you very often. Since 89s is hardly ever dominated, it's much easier to play.

Originally posted by TinoLaan
The problem with AT is that you will often find yourself losing a lot of money with a dominated hand. It will just happen very often that you have top pair, when your opponent will have a better kicker to go along with it. It's going to be very difficult to get away from this.

89s plays a lot better. It can hit decent enough draws, or well disguised two pair type hands. You'll often know where you're at in the hand immediately, whereas this is a lot more difficult with AT.

They call this reverse implied odds. Hands like AT and QT and KJ seem pretty decent at first, but you'll often find yourself losing money to hands that dominate you very often. Since 89s is hardly ever dominated, it's much easier to play.

Hope that helps!

Yep pretty much this. It's tried and tested and designed to keep very beginner players out of as much trouble as possible. As your game develops then you will need to move away from the charts and will recognise the spots where it is appropriate to do so

Yep, basically as Carl mentioned, you can certainly start playing such hands when you get more experienced and know when to fold them post flop. But if you still don't know when to fold such hands based on your opponents' actions and tendencies, it is probably best to avoid nasty spots and just fold them, because they will probably cost you a lot of money, which you obviously don't want

I thought about the easyness of playing both types of hand but then it's more an affair of how often you will misread your opponents than how often the hand will actually be ahead, isn't it?

This is the key to poker, how much easier would it be if we could see the opponents cards?
with 98s we can tell where we are in the hand a lot better too. We either flop a straight or a straight draw and/or a flush or flush draw we can also pick up some nice 2 pair hands. If we flop a 9 or an 8 it will often be middle pair or higher cards will likely come on the turn/river so be careful as you proceed.

With AT if we raise and get 3bet we have to fold because (most of the time) the only hands 3 betting us will be AJ, AQ, AK or high pocket pairs so if we call we dont have the initiative and are likely playing oop with a hand thats dominated and if we 4bet we are cutting our own throat because then definitely the only hand to continue will be beating us by a long way.

This is why taking notes and using a HUD is really important. Even at the micros where there are tons of players you will often find yourself playing against the same guys and they are super exploitable you just need to take some notes and work out a plan of action. We will know if they start 3betting us really wide or call a lot of 3bets and fold to flop C-bets etc